


Vicious Cycle

by Merkwerkee



Series: Pilots of ARENA [5]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: Gore, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, dead dove do not eat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22856737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: The bond between a metapilot and their avatars is complex and profound, a meeting of two souls. But when one loses their mind and heart, the other slowly but surely follows
Series: Pilots of ARENA [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643143





	Vicious Cycle

Swims Many Shoals did not feel well. **  
**

He wasn’t sick, exactly. No disease preyed upon his health, no bad food rotted in his belly - but a shadow loomed over his heart nevertheless at the thought of what he had to do. Of what the duty was of him and all his siblings.

It’s not every day you were obligated to kill your mother, after all.

Of course, it wasn’t just that Hunts Swift Prey was their mother. She had also been the leader of the Greater Spinwise Current Frenzy for many years. Her nuanced understanding of group dynamics and uncanny acumen in dealing with those not a part of the frenzy had made her the best leader in several generations, and the changes she had wrought had let the frenzy grow to the largest it had been in living memory thanks to pioneering food storage techniques and new and improved catching strategies.

Swims Many Shoals and all her progeny had profited greatly from her leadership, and so they had ignored the strangeness at first. Hunts Swift Prey was getting on in years, a little shortness of temper was to be expected. A certain amount of rudeness, both to them and their allies could be traced to the same source. Maybe the moodiness was due to a bad meal. The punishments were a little more aggressive, but nothing too far beyond acceptable limits.

And then she’d devoured her litter.

It wasn’t unheard of, when times were lean and the frenzy was getting too large. But they’d never had more food, the new method of preservation Hunts Swift Prey had negotiated for from the Kesshcarron - a type of bottom-dweller - had allowed them to lay in enough food to last three seasons before hunting again, even if they added another _dozen_ to their number. There had been no reason to devour a litter, and when Swims Many Shoals had pressed her for a reason she had sent him away bleeding from a gash in his shoulder and without a response. Closes Many Wounds had tutted over the depth of the gash, but said nothing about where Swims Many Shoals had acquired it.

For all the knotty problems such an action entailed Hunts Swift Prey was their most respected and beloved leader, and had been for many years, and they trusted her enough to accept the complete lack of explanation she provided. They’d kept a closer watch on her afterwards though, Swims Many Shoals and Closes Many Wounds, which made her even more quarrelsome and a number of their brethren had acquired new scars from a correcting nip that was harder than warranted.

Some days were better than others, but on the whole time wore away their beloved leader. Lights turned to seasons, and Swims Many Shoals - being one of the few fast enough to dodge the quick, often petulant strikes of Hunts Swift Prey as well as being one of her favorite children - had gotten perhaps the best view of her deterioration. 

So when she ate a second litter, he couldn’t say he was surprised.

Indeed, the consensus was more resignation than horror. As the leader of the frenzy and the only one allowed to breed, a certain amount of behavior was excusable - but this was not. She had killed the future of the frenzy three times over; first by becoming increasingly hostile to allies, then by attacking members of the frenzy unprovoked, and finally by killing the future generations. 

The frenzy couldn’t survive such a betrayal. They had gathered and spoken for a long time before reaching a consensus; they would kill the mad husk that had been Hunts Swift Prey, and then they would disperse. None of them particularly wished to take Hunts Swift Prey’s place, though killing her would allow any of the females license to do so, and the waters around them had soured with bad memories and a taste of madness. So they would leave; those with desirable skills would pair up with those whose skills were less so to ensure all would find new frenzies, and they would leave the waters they had lived in all their lives to find new homes free of the taint of what Hunts Swift Prey had done.

But first they had to kill her, and that was not an easy task.

Swims Many Shoals had been elected to bring her to the ambush. He’d objected, but been overruled on the reasonable grounds that whoever did it was going to be the closest to her when the attack started and therefore in the most danger. As the swiftest, he was the most likely to live. Unstated was the fact that, even in the throes of whatever madness had taken her mind, she had shown a reluctance to attack him that no other member of the frenzy shared.

Which had led him to the here and now, swimming a respectful distance away from his mother as he subtly guided her to her doom. It was necessary, a litter eater could not be allowed to live, yet it still rested uneasily with him. For everything she had done - to him, to the frenzy - she was still his mother. Hunts Swift Prey seemed oblivious to his disquiet, however, where before she would have seen and sussed out the reason why before they had swum half a klick - that, more than anything was a sign to Swims Many Shoals that whatever this thing was, it wasn’t his mother anymore.

When the frenzy struck, she was caught completely unawares.

Reads The Currents was the first to land a hit, coming up from below and behind a dead coral outcropping. Her teeth gashed open Hunts Swift Prey’s side and blood spread in the water like a great storm cloud. Hunts Swift Prey’s retaliation had been immediate - but, as predicted, not towards Swims Many Shoals, and Reads The Currents had already ducked out of range.

Then the rest of the frenzy descended.

It was a short, ugly fight. Hunts Swift Prey was their finest fighter, but she was no match for seven generations of her adult progeny. Three of them perished at her claws; Dances In Air died choking when a powerful strike sliced open her gills, Breaker Of Shells died when a lucky lash broke his neck, and Fights The Tide - her second in command and father of the frenzy - was laid open from neck to waist, sinking as his swim bladders ruptured.

Three of their own dead and drifting in the current when Hunts Swift Prey finally stopped thrashing. The water was thick with blood and offal, the latter mostly from Fights The Tide, but the normal hunger such things normally evoked was curiously absent. Their species was not an introspective one; they had no funeral traditions, the bodies of the fallen were usually eaten and the bones left to drift, but something about the thought of doing that this time was… unsettling.

Wrong.

Swims Many Shoals was the first to move, swimming forward slowly toward the mortal remains of their collective mother and greatest leader. A few of his siblings made aborted movements to get in his way, but ceased when he began to clean the body up as best he could. Closes Many Wounds, one of the few who had abstained from the attack itself, joined him as he brushed the torn skin smooth and closed the glassy eyes.

There wasn’t much that could be done, but the two of them did what they could while the others hung silently in the water and watched. When they had finished, Closes Many Wounds drew back while Swims Many Shoals gently pulled the corpse over to the dead coral outcrop. He couldn’t say why he was drawn to the spot, but dead to the dead seemed somehow fitting. He tucked the mortal remains of Hunts Swift Prey gently into a crevice between two folds of the coral and placed rocks around and on her to keep her from floating away.

When he could do nothing else for the one who had given them so much, he drew back and let his arms fall to his sides. His siblings departed two by two, without fanfare, without words. But the deaths had left the numbers uneven, so in the end Swims Many Shoals was left alone with the grisly monument.

It wasn’t a good place to be; with the Greater Spinwise Current frenzy’s dissolution the territory - and the name - were ripe for the taking. Another frenzy would come to claim it as their own, for it was rich enough to sustain five litters even without the tips and tricks Hunts Swift Prey had bartered for over the years. Any new frenzy who did would, of course, kill any of the previous occupants they found in the territory, as was their right; it did no good, after all, to let drains on valuable resources continue living when they provided nothing in return for what they took.

And it wasn’t as though Swims Many Shoals had no options. He was strong and fast and knew a great deal about the changes Hunts Swift Prey had made during her leadership; another frenzy would welcome him gladly as breeding stock and a contender for subordinate leadership positions. He could swim as far and as fast as he liked and he could have a good life wherever he ended up..

But he didn’t _want_ to leave.

He hadn’t been second in command, but he had been one of the closest to his mother in the frenzy, a confidant and beloved child… _before_. If only he had seen what was happening, if only he had recognized the moodiness wasn’t some passing thing, if only he had done something sooner.

_If only, if only, if only_

The guilt ate at his insides like acid as he hung in place, unable to tear his eyes away from the makeshift grave. Finally, he could bear it no longer. Drawn as if by gravity, he swam over to a nearby spot on the dead coral stalk and wound his arms through whatever holes he could find and settled down to wait. He would not give up and abandon her in death as he had in life; starving to death was a slow way to go but, in the end, he’d see his mother again.

————————————————————————————————-

_In a dusty wasteland where the plants are bitter and stunted and the sun shines red through the clouds, a hunched figure stalks the days and nights. It might have been a pretty blonde woman in a shapeless shirt and pants, tied at the waist. It might have been a lovely woman, the toast of her neighborhood, with blonde hair and a bright future in the Party. It might have been a gladiator, scraping gossip like lifeblood from a place riddled with despair._

_It might have been all of those things, once upon a time, but it isn’t anymore._

_Now it is death._

_It kills everything it finds - friendly, unfriendly, mutated, unchanged, barely sentient and hyper-intelligent. Everything. No exceptions._

_Of course, it has to find them first._

_Hiding from it is difficult but not impossible. The trick is to stay, in whatever hiding spot you’ve chosen; if you run, it WILL catch you._

_And that’s just what they’re counting on._

_They’re a motley bunch, drawn together for a variety of reasons but united in one purpose: Kill the beast. Some were in it for the money - bounties from across the wasteland. Others joined for vengeance, for loss and grief; still others sought the glory, the prestige of putting down a legend. In the end, it didn’t matter why they were here, only that they were here._

_They’d drawn sticks to see who was bait, and the poor bastard was sweating it out at the mouth of the canyon they’d set the ambush in. His job was to get the thing’s attention and draw it as far into the canyon as he could - after all, the thing seemed to prefer moving prey. The rest of them waited at the lip of the canyon, armed with whatever they had in the way of guns. They had to wait until all of them had a clear shot, or this’d be the death of them all._

_They had one shot._

_A yelp, followed by four running steps was all the warning they got before the screaming started, and all the killers tightened their grips on whatever weapon they had. The screaming stopped, replaced by an ugly, wet crunching. It went on for an improbably long time, but the silence when that stopped was profound._

_The thing appeared in the mouth of the canyon, but they held their fire. It walked slowly some way into the canyon, and they held their fire. It made its way further into the canyon, and paused in the center._

_They fired._

_The thing was fast, but not faster than a bullet._

_Ten bullets._

_A hundred bullets._

_When it fell, it didn’t look like anything anymore._


End file.
